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Fritz Haber: A Monster Who Fed the World

224 points by mikecarlton 9y ago

loorinm 9y ago
What an insane and fascinating read. Two things occured to me: I don’t really understand how and why war happens. Like, it starts out as two parties both wanting the same resource, and then somebody says “over my dead body” or something and then a million other people decide to also join in this fight? I do not get it. The other thing is : The “inherent harm of technology”. Every single advancement will 100% hurt someone. In this case it hurt a lot of people. But it’s impossible to stop progress, even if you keep a discovery secret for a while, it won’t last. Humanity will advance, and somewhat destroy itself in the process.
- NamTaf 9y ago
  If you ever get to go to to the south-west of Belgium and visit Ypres, there is an absolutely fantastic exhibit on the Great War in the Cloth Hall. The first part of it describes the late 1800s extreme nationalism and build-up to the war with very harrowing finality and a sense that the ball that caused the war had started rolling decades before its outbreak and was unstoppable by the turn of the century. I had a genuine sense of helplessness in the face of that as I finished that stage of the exhibit and went into the part regarding the period of the war itself. It is probably one of the most memorable (in the literal sense of the term) exhibits regarding the War that I've seen. I absolutely recommend it.
- JCSato 9y ago
  Highly recommend you check out The Great War series on Youtube. Even if you just watch the prologue to the war videos, very informative on how WW1 got kicked off. Short answer: nationalism and a lot of treaties and grudges from past wars.
  - smackay 9y ago
    I saw a history documentary on the BBC many, many years ago where the historian was describing that the reason WWI started was because of railway timetables - basically moving all those troops and material was a logistical nightmare. Once the armies were assembled it was going to be impossibly difficult to move them all back so they got put into action instead. Most likely the historian was AJP Taylor: http://www.ae.metu.edu.tr/~evren/history/texts/taylor1.htm http://www.ae.metu.edu.tr/~evren/history/texts/taylor1.htm
    - michaelt 9y ago
      Once the armies were assembled it was going to be impossibly difficult to move them all back so they got put into action instead. I read a more subtle theory in the book "Arms and Influence" by Thomas C. Schelling [1]. In short, at the start of WW1, the Russians had two plans available: A plan to mobilise against the Austro-Hungarians only, and a plan to mobilise against them and the Germans at the same time. But if they went for the Austria-Hungary-only plan, they'd be extra-vulnerable to German attack. After all, the troops and trains are all in the wrong place! So although they were _mostly_ worried about Austria-Hungary, they were moderately worried about Germany, so they went with the mobilise-against-both plan. And as soon as Russia started massing troops at the German border, what could Germany do except respond in kind? Hence there was an escalation to war despite the fact neither side would benefit from it. In other words: The logistics played a part, but it wasn't _just_ using the troops because they're here now - the logistics forced the Russians to choose between two bad options, forcing them into a choice that would inevitably trigger the escalation to war. [1] https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=TX_yAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT161&lpg=PT161&dq=%22Arms+and+Influence%22+mobilise+russia&source=bl&ots=0FdXJSt2ur&sig=y1cI8iJWw9rEQKnCgz2b_uzH61M&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiQi6TP2qLZAhWmAMAKHc1cB18Q6AEIJzAA https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=TX_yAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT161&lp...
      - notahacker 9y ago
        The accompanying theory is that Germany had long planned for the eventuality of fighting a Franco-Russian alliance, and their agreed military strategy for dealing with this potential situation was to attack France first, in the hope that they could knock France out the war before Russia was fully mobilised. The need for speed in executing this plan necessitated an attack via neutral Belgium to avoid France's border forts and easily defensible territory (which was what brought Belgian ally Britain into the war)
- js8 9y ago
  "I don’t really understand how and why war happens." I think we don't really know. We know that greed plays a role, but it is not always the case of someone stronger attacking someone weaker. In Steven Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature, this is shortly discussed. IIRC he says that no reason put forward as an explanation for war can be conclusively proven from the available data (he mentions some war databases containing over 20k conflicts of more than 100 people each). So, I think, unfortunately, conflict is like rain. You know that condensation is the cause, yet you can't really predict when and with what intensity it will happen. But you know it will.
  - milankovic 9y ago
    I can't agree more. This is an excellent observation. Also, that last sentence. Bravo. I think this is the best allegory for conflict (or war) that I have ever seen.
  - arca_vorago 9y ago
    Some of us know but would be shunned if we told you. As a combat vet I have spent years since I got out trying to understand the big picture... and all I can tell you is the truth is nastier, and stranger, than fiction. I started out with just Iraq, but by the end of it had learned the GWOT was only the latest iteration of a long game that has been played over centuries.
    - moh_maya 9y ago
      What is your conclusion? Can you share? (At the risk of being shunned..,?)
    - icebraining 9y ago
      So are you posting this to taunt or to grandstand?
    - jessaustin 9y ago
      You're using an anonymous account, and I for one promise to upvote whatever "nastier, stranger" truth you post. Lay it on us, man!
- okket 9y ago
  Not only humanity itself. Feeding the world and letting humans grow from ~1 billion to ~8 billion certainly endangered/made many species go extinct. There is no such thing as a free meal, really.
  - carlmr 9y ago
    This also reminded me of the first such revolution, the agricultural revolution. In A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harrari he says that it wasn't humans that domesticated wheat, but wheat that domesticated humans. The reasoning being that since we started to use wheat we've grown to too large numbers to go back to the previous lifestyle. We've been essentially trapped to continue using wheat, which was not even as good for our health. A similar argument could be made about the Haber-Bosch process. There's no way back from too much growth. And there are serious side effects.
- nabla9 9y ago
  Is this "I don't get it" just rhetorical question or are you really not getting it and want to understand it? Rudyard Kipling's writings (before and during WWII) are probably the best source if you want to learn the sentiment that leads to the war. >million other people decide to also join in this fight Most people don't get to decide. Most of them are conscripted.
  - verylittlemeat 9y ago
    The United States doesn't conscript soldiers and yet can find hundreds of thousands of infantry soldiers to wage war. I don't think it's controversial to say that there's way more going on behind the effort to staff an army than threat of punishment from the government. Historically there are many examples of citizens eager to line up and fight for their country (whether for pragmatic or idealistic reasons). This isn't just patriotic rhetoric, it's a very powerful social force once set in motion. If our species has any enduring trait then violent conflict through war must be pretty close to the top of the list.
    - loorinm 9y ago
      Yeah this is kind of my point. I guess I probably don’t get it because I didn’t grow up in a military family. I guess people will do whatever they have to do for money. Because they are poor. I’m pretty poor too but I feel like I have other options than to put my life in danger.
  - dsego 9y ago
    I think it's a generational thing. Young people born in time of peace romanticizing great battles, national pride etc. Peace is boring and hard, there are economical struggles, politics, many problems without someone to blame. In war time everything is much clearer, esp. for young boys, they just have to kill the bad guys (the other side) and receive accolades. Of course, the stage is usually already set up by propaganda, schools, one-sided history teaching and so on.
    - Quarrelsome 9y ago
- anvandare 9y ago
  War is the essence of life. Limited resources means any growing system inevitably hits this (carrying) limit. Sooner or later, there are no more unclaimed resources available and you have to start competing with others for access to the resources. Mutation and evolution follows. The only alternative is to open up more resources (like the Haber–Bosch process did) but that's just postponing the inevitable. The amount of (useful) matter and energy in the universe is both finite and decreasing.
  - tyfon 9y ago
    Hopefully, we will attain enough collective intelligence eventually that we will be able stop population growth and stop having irrational hatred for other humans. I am however pessimistic.
  - shaki-dora 9y ago
    Population growth has seized in industrialized countries, and is plateauing in others. Humanity’s foremost achievement is overcoming its biological roots, and any view of the world based on supposedly unchangeable evolutionary mechanisms is deeply flawed.
    - anvandare 9y ago
      The population might plateau, but our resource consumption is still rising. I'd be very surprised if we manage to avert calamity, though I'm quite certain we'll survive it.
    - gnode 9y ago
      > Humanity’s foremost achievement is overcoming its biological roots I think we're very far from that. I would say our biological roots are responsible for our individualism, which often doesn't manifest as boundless reproduction, but rather as greed.
- rocqua 9y ago
  I think generally, long wars are a mistake. My hypothesis. Party A wants Thing from party B. Moreover, party A things they could take it by force. Even if party B things they couldn't defend Thing, they can't just give it, because that sets a wrong precedent. Party B relies on being able to exact a very high toll should party A try to get thing. Rationally, you don't declare a war you don't expect to win. So, in the above scenario, when part A declares war, they expect that party B cannot exact a high enough toll for Thing. When they do, it was a mistake. The alternative are wars for 'moral' reasons, which are mostly about retribution or saving face. This is essentially how the murder of a prince lead escalated to a war that became WW1.
  - Hattes 9y ago
    You may very well declare a war that you don't expect to win if you have even worse expectations for a future war. This was pretty much the situation of Germany in WW1, from my understanding.
    - arethuza 9y ago
      And the Soviets in '83 - who were terrified that the US and its allies were going to attack so they considered a first strike even though they knew this would be disastrous.
    - nickik 9y ago
      That was maybe what a couple of people thought. However it is totally wrong, Germany was not in that situation. Those are the kinds of things you say that already imply 100s of other theories and assumption and then you are like 'We have no choice'. Germany was in a fantastic geopolitical situation after Bismark but then just fucked it all up because they had all these wrong (and sometimes crazy) assumptions.
    - Tech-Noir 9y ago
      Or if you believe the superior power will not respond militarily, as in the Falklands in 1982. Unfortunately for the junta, they weren't the only unpopular right-wing government who saw warfare and jingoism as a handy distraction from internal economic and social problems.
- bsder 9y ago
  In the case of World War I, Otto von Bismarck put together an interlocking set of alliances to forge the German Empire. Unfortunately, Wilhelm II was not as capable (I'm being nice--Wilhelm II was an idiot), and didn't know how to manage this properly. It is, of course, possible that even Bismarck could not have continued to manage them given the strains of nationalism that he set in motion. However, Bismarck was very motivated to maintain the peace rather than motivated to engage in war and that served Germany very well for a remarkably long time. Even worse, Bismarck understood about not letting things get out of hand. He was quoted in 1898--"One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans"
  - oblio 9y ago
    > "One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans" I absolutely despise these statements, that are perpetuated to the present day. I'm from near the Balkans, from Romania. They depict the Balkan region as being some sort of backwards warmongers, which is not the case (yes, the region is not very developed but it's far from the poorest regions on this planet; also, yes, I know about the Yugoslav Wars, but that's a rather extreme scenario and even people in the region were appalled at what the Serbs did, especially). Anyway, the reason I don't like it: it was foreign empires vying in the region that made the mess. Turks, Austrians, Russians, Brits, Italians, Germans, French, they're the ones that started the wars. There was no way the local conflicts would have ever become global conflicts. The locals just didn't have the desire or resources to escalate such a conflict. Instead these empires just used them as battering rams against the other empires.
    - myrandomcomment 9y ago
      You say this but just as soon as the yoke of Tito (and the follow on) was removed from the region everyone starting killing each other again. Historically it has been a very violent region filled with ethnic strife. The great powers just exploted that to help control, but it's existence is on the population.
      - 9y ago
- mhneu 9y ago
  > how war happens Orwell captured one way total war can happen: a powerful small group of people gains control of a propaganda apparatus, and uses control of messaging to divide a country, or turn a country against a demonized minority group or external rival. That happened with Mao, with Hitler, with Stalin, with Mussolini. Today’s challenge is ensuring that the propaganda arms created by Murdoch and Mercer and Koch don’t do that to America.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - convivialdingo 9y ago
    Who's the most demonized group of people in America today?
    - erikpukinskis 9y ago
      Foreign born Muslims probably.
- nickik 9y ago
  > I don’t really understand how and why war happens. The error you are making is that you are thinking in terms of groups or states. Think of these people as individuals. Quite simply, some individual people wanted war to fulfill their political/personal ambitions and think war can make them happen. They really don't care much about the people who die. Its quite as simple as that. So the army marches because from their perspective a legit government said, because it is in the interest of the country, plus they get payed. The defenders are just defending their home country because they don't want to see it destroyed. WW1 is really that simple.
  - soundwave106 9y ago
    I think it is okay to think somewhat in groups, that is, when it comes to examining some of the psychology behind warfare. Ultimately, a lot of that side of human warfare has a lot to do IMHO with human's inherit tribalistic nature. The part about getting people to not care about the people who die is, I think, very important as far as understanding how warfare can happen on the scale it does. Most wars are characterized by strong propaganda denigrating the opposing side in negative stereotypical terms. In many cases, I think that the leaders who push for war actually share similar beliefs as a nationalism-driven populace -- it's more than mere exploitative. Such explains why how, say, conflict over scarce resources can turn into something like violent conflict, which often (ironically) has a negative impact on the scarce resources itself. Nationalism (and some things which are tangentially related like imperialism) was by many historical accounts one of the major forces that led to WWI. (As well as many other wars, I might add.)
    - nickik 9y ago
      > inherit tribalistic nature I don't think its as simple as inherent in tribal nature. Leaders are selected and they need to consider the opinion of the electorate (this concept applies to non-democratic states as well). In Political Science this is called electorate theory. > I think that the leaders who push for war actually share similar beliefs as a nationalism-driven populace -- it's more than mere exploitative Agree. > Nationalism (and some things which are tangentially related like imperialism) was by many historical accounts one of the major forces that led to WWI. (As well as many other wars, I might add.) Nationalism I would agree but in the end the choice was with some leaders, and many of those were not really nationalist but rather classical conservatives. Your point about resources is correct, they wanted to control those resources, not relay on markets and cooperation. After that the Nazis doubled down on those terrible zero sum ideas.
- groby_b 9y ago
  Well, good thing is we're all getting an object lesson right now. Watch North Korea and the U.S. interact. That is how war happens. Leaders who for various reasons taunt and provoke each other, implementing what to either populace seems a reasonable policy. (NK would like to be able to defend against the US, so they get nukes. The US would like to not be nuked, so they agitate strongly against them). Alas, these policies are in conflict, so tensions rise. At some point, a small event - a misunderstanding, a border skirmish, etc - happens. In the context of already ratcheted up tensions, it spirals out of control because everybody feels the need to react quickly, before the other side escalates. Nobody says "over my dead body". Everybody takes the next step, a step that's entirely reasonable from their perspective, but opens up "reasonable" steps for the other side. The core problem is that neither side considers the needs of the other side. Peace requires active communication to constantly de-escalate and compromise, from both sides. An interest in a common good. War is what happens when you lose that and move to self-interest.
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    USA has constantly pressured DPRK over the course of decades, mostly for domestic political purposes. At many points we could have chosen less confrontation, but usually we chose more. Recently we offered Qaddafi the same deal we have continually offered the Kims, and then after he accepted it we "changed our minds" and shoved a bayonet up his ass. Even now we continue the pressure (somewhat erratically, because Trump), when doing so has no conceivable "self-interest" on a national level. Of course more war is very much in the interest of armaments manufacturers and their sockpuppets in politics and the media. If war were ever in the overall national interest, we'd occasionally win a war or even just accomplish some vague goal by fighting one. That has never happened in my lifetime or that of my parents. Of course I have to stipulate now that the Kim Dynasty are very bad no-good people whom we should all detest, otherwise trolls might pretend to misunderstand me.
    - nsnick 9y ago
      At some point you have to stand up to despots in the name of human rights.
- dschuetz 9y ago
  A war is always the ultimate escalation of conflict of interests. "Over my dead body" is literally the line, as you said. As for technology, the purpose of a machine or a construct is primarily a solution to problems which made people's lifes difficult. The solutions of technology make people's lifes easier, more secure, but it also bears risks and unsforseen consequences. That's not always that case, as the special case of war clearly show it. War machinery makes people's lifes worse, but it's not the fault of machinery or technologies, it the fault of people waging wars.
  - dschuetz 9y ago
    This discussion on Haber today inspired me to write a short article on whether it's even debatable how to judge his doing in WW I. Especially so the "Over my dead body" and why do wars thoughts, so kudos to you @nickik!
- zeveb 9y ago
  > I don’t really understand how and why war happens. Like, it starts out as two parties both wanting the same resource, and then somebody says “over my dead body” or something and then a million other people decide to also join in this fight? I do not get it. Different wars start for different reasons. The Great War started because the Serbian government financed a small group of separatists in Austria-Hungary, who assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. The Austro-Hungarian government naturally objected, and presented the Serbians with an ultimatum essentially demanding the ability to investigate & prosecute anyone involved. Serbia refused, supported by its ally Russia, who mobilised & threatened to invade Austria-Hungary & Germany if either did anything to Serbia. Due to the military realities of the time, if one country mobilised and another didn't, the former country would be able to take great swathes of territory from the latter before the latter could do anything. So of course with Russia mobilised Germany had to mobilise. And of course with Germany mobilised France had to mobilise too. France, meanwhile, really wanted to take back a piece of territory that Germany had won in 1873 (and France had previously won in 1648 …), so planned to invade Germany as soon as Germany & France's ally Russia were fighting. The Russian army was large but poor, while France's was smaller but deadly. Faced with a two-front war, the German plan was to hold Russia at bay while defeating France first, then swing to the east and defeat Russia second. However, a fight across the heavily-fortified Franco-German border would have been far too slow to defeat France in a timely fashion, so the Germans planned to go around the French border fortresses by marching through Belgium, never mind that Belgium had not agreed to this plan. So, Germany invades Belgium, invades France, almost makes it to Paris, gets pushed back, the Brits join the fight, the Western Front solidifies into a four-year stalemate in which roughly 3 million men die and 8 million are wounded; Austria-Hungary invades Serbia but does remarkably poorly; Russia invades Germany & Austria-Hungary; Turkey joins the fray, hoping to reconquer some of the Balkan countries which had won their independence. Ultimately the victorious Allies assign guilt for the war to Germany, imposing reparations which set the stage for the much nastier Second World War; the monarchs of Serbia, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia & Turkey lose their thrones and/or lives; Russia falls to Bolshevik Communism (which sets the stage for the much nastier Second World War); Eastern Europe is broken into a patchwork of states with an unstable ethnic mixture (which sets the stage for the much nastier Second World War); millions die; and the Belle Époque, the highest point of western civilisation, gives way to the horror & madness of the twentieth century, the single bloodiest hundred years mankind's ever seen. As for the assassin who started it all? Too young to be executed, he wastes away & dies in prison of tuberculosis.
- emp_ 9y ago
  Adding to an extensive reply list, violence seems to sprout when conversation ends, usually when people will protect ideas from being challenged is a big tell.
- lxmorj 9y ago
  The assumption that all things discovered will be discovered elsewhere is reasonable, but still an assumption. I wonder though... how many dangerous ideas have been hidden by their progenitors, never to be rediscovered?
- loorinm 9y ago
  OP here. Wow thanks for all the replies and views on why war happens. I guess you could always explain any war by listing all the events that came righ before, but I don’t think that answers another question, which is this: Why is it “ok” for governments to hire huge groups of people to murder other people, when murder is not ok in other settings? This is an obvious legal and moral contradiction right?
  - hutzlibu 9y ago
    "This is an obvious legal and moral contradiction right?" No it is not. Legally it is only for members of the own society. But in war this society acts as a group against another group. Legally totally different. (morally different story) But still complicated especially today with asymmetrical warfare. (france for example has no death penalty, but don't want their (IS) djihadists to come back and create legal problems (proving guilt is hard and putting them in jail creates also problems) ... so apparently it is easier for the French government to (secretly) order their special troops to make sure that not much of the french jihadists ended up as prisoners in syria or elsewhere and then demanded being brought back to french .. because killing in war is legal .. but since they have doubts on their own, it is of course not officially practiced) Oh and in theory of course, nobody is starting a war anymore, since this is somewhat outlawed. Everyone is only "defending". Which does make sense, also morally - so yeah I believe in general it is OK to have a group of people trained to kill in case bad killers invade. Having a army to defend. Simple isolationist? But what if there are friends of yours under attack somewhere else in the planet? You go and help them, morally right, I believe. But then things get complicated ... as "friends", people, cultures and states are not homogeneous things. So those friends of yours might be part of a legally justified dictatorship. So you invade that dictatorship? And teach them democracy? Well, that failed quite spectacular all the last times, but maybe that was also because of different reasons, as there were usually not so much "friends" who needed help, but rather a lot of hypocrisy to disguise plain old power politic where war is just a tool for politics in the bigger cultural struggle.
jzl 9y ago
There is an incredible book about this topic called "The Alchemy of Air"@, which I highly recommend. It's one of the best non-fiction science books I've ever read. Also available on Audible. Fritz Haber's life story is intertwined with Einstein's and the book pairs extremely well with Walter Isaacson's Einstein biography, which is a MUST read (or audiobook listen). @ - Full title: "The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler"
- nvahalik 9y ago
  Thomas Hager wrote that book along with “The Demon under the Microscope”. Excellent works.
- Pulcinella 9y ago
  I second this recommendation. It also covers Carl Bosch, who took Haber’s process and industrialized it at BASF. Haber got the process to work in a small bespoke quartz reactor, which obviously wouldn’t scale.
abainbridge 9y ago
> Fritz Haber set that future by on a different course by solving one of the greatest problems humanity ever faced: How to feed the world. He didn't solve it. He just delayed the problem for a while. Solving it requires stopping the exponential growth of the human population.
- nabla9 9y ago
  Human population is not growing exponentially anymore. Human population growth rate peaked 1962 at 2.1%, and it has been slowing down since. Even remaining population growth is a big problem, but using he word 'exponentially' to describe growth that is slowing down and is most likely sublinear is not accurate.
  - abainbridge 9y ago
    Yes, sorry, you are right. I still think we might have a nicer planet if Fritz had invented a (humane) way to prevent the exponential population growth we had in the 20th century, instead of a way to support it.
- cdoxsey 9y ago
  A lot of people don't know this but birth rates have fallen dramatically: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility We will soon have the opposite problem in many countries - an aging population with no base of support.
soneca 9y ago
"Billions of people would not exist without him. And yet without him, World War I would have ended years earlier" The article is very interesting, but there is this Hollywood simplistic approach where one man is responsible for all things. The text even mention the Allies developing a poison gas, why not other German chemic? No one other person would be able to discover how to produce amonia? I don't subscribe to this way of looking into historical figures. Nevertheless, a great text.
- nabla9 9y ago
  It seems that he was lobbying hard for the use of the gas.
  - notahacker 9y ago
    Yep. Prevailing military opinion against using poison gases could have changed over the course of the war, of course, but he brought both the technical knowhow and the outspoken advocacy. The Allies' first alleged use of poison gas turned out to be an unfounded rumour which Haber himself was responsible for disproving. Didn't take the Allies long to muster a response though, and they had their own Nobel Laureate Victor Grignard to build chemical weapons for them.
- nscalf 9y ago
  To put some of this into context, there were a lot of people saying that the world was going to run out of food soon and we couldn't sustain our growing population. It'd be as if someone today invented a solution to global warming, it was a problem everyone knew about and worried about to some extend.
- mannykannot 9y ago
  There is no doubt that if he had not solved the nitrogen-fixing problem, someone else would have, and it is certainly possible that someone else would have pushed the use of poison gas into practice. It is also generally simplistic to claim that any one thing greatly prolonged the war. 'Great men' and 'pivotal event' historiography is a simplistic way of looking at the past, but nevertheless, it is a simple historical fact that he was the person who did these two things, and the case for nitrogen-fixing extending the war is better than most other 'but for...' stories.
baybal2 9y ago
Haber was a true giant. Nobody out people there would've lived without him inventing a process that lead to first generation chemical fertilizers. An invention I rank second to invention of fire in history of our species. (third being the metallurgy) Yet, the man is unknown to non-chemist, and some anthropologists
xefer 9y ago
The great Vaclav Smil wrote about the Haber process and its relationship to world population in a Scientific American article in 1997: http://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/Smil_SciAm_N2cycle.pdf http://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/Smil_SciAm_N2cycle.... [PDF] It sort of blew my mind when I read it back then
nscalf 9y ago
If you're interested in this, RadioLab did a great episode on good and evil and really took note of Fritz Haber. It's called The Bad Show. Fritz Haber was a really conflicting character, he seemed extremely patriotic and made a lot of personal sacrifices for his country. Every time I see someone who is described like that, I have to wonder how much of the disdain we have for him is because that wasn't our country? If we had a brilliant man who invented a solution to the worldwide fear of an impending food shortage, but they also made a disturbing wartime weapon, would we feel the same way?
- aalleavitch 9y ago
  Isn't that basically the case for all the famous men on the Manhattan project?
  - wbl 9y ago
    They made sacrifices for someone else's country. A lot of them were not US citizens.
    - mieseratte 9y ago
      Sure, a whole lot of 'em might have been of foreign origin but that doesn't preclude one from being or becoming an American.
- mieseratte 9y ago
  > Every time I see someone who is described like that, I have to wonder how much of the disdain we have for him is because that wasn't our country? If we had a brilliant man who invented a solution to the worldwide fear of an impending food shortage, but they also made a disturbing wartime weapon, would we feel the same way? He might be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch!
23443463455 9y ago
It's interesting what a white wash of the monster this piece is. Get the bad out of the way so the "good" can clear the conscience. When do we start applying this technique to the Nazis?
jumbopapa 9y ago
Oh yeah, I heard about this guy on the Joe Rogan Experience!
- BLanen 9y ago
  Yea... Quite a lot... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhNWB4eqQbI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhNWB4eqQbI
mmirate 9y ago
Quite obviously the billions of people outweigh the millions of soldiers.
stevespang 9y ago
Thanks for posting this, I was not aware of this CRIME.
dschuetz 9y ago
I don't think that his involvements in WW I are justified by his achievements in chemistry in favor of world population problems. Someone else would have found a way to bind nitrogen without him and so feed billions of people in the end. Much later perhaps, but eventually still. Yet, most of today's populus have barely enough to eat. So, ultimataly the problem remains unsolved, or it shifted even. Haber was not a solution. He was as tragic and as fanatic as everybody else in Europe at that time. Nazi Germany also have invented A LOT of world changing things. They solved a lot of problems. Yet, they managed to do such unspeakable things that all the good stuff instantly fades. In my humble opinion, it's not difficult to judge a person who commits unspeakable crimes by his good or bad deeds. Good deeds are optional, always. Bad deeds are never an option, regardless of eventual outcomes or consequences.
- 0ld 9y ago
  > such unspeakable things that all the good stuff instantly fades Well, in 50-100 years noone would really care about atrocities of ww2, just like almost noone cares about ww1 now, and literary noone about the atrocities of the wars before ww1. But "the world-changing things" will stay, and the people who created these things will be remembered
  - dschuetz 9y ago
    I don't agree. The Mongol Empire as an example is still remembered to this day. Nobody cares what exactly they did, but it's common sense that it was pretty bad. British colonial era? Same thing, but half the world still remembers what atrocities they have commited, and it was longer ago as WW I. It's the bad things generations of people remember, the good things not so much. You know, hate sows war, war sows hate. The vicious circle as old as time.
    - hh3k0 9y ago
      > The Mongol Empire as an example is still remembered to this day. Nobody cares what exactly they did, but it's common sense that it was pretty bad. Is it really? I think most people only remember them as successful conquerors. > British colonial era? Same thing, but half the world still remembers what atrocities they have commited, and it was longer ago as WW I. Depends! The British Empire lasted until the 1960s -- arguably 1997. That's much fresher than WW1 or WW2. Besides, who remembers the British concentration camps?
perfmode 9y ago
> Billions of people would not exist without him As if this is a gift. A big assumption to make. More and more, I am taking to the anti-natalist viewpoint.
- workthrowaway27 9y ago
  That's a poor approach to life. I've tried it.
  - perfmode 9y ago
    Say more
zeveb 9y ago
Wow, the article is full of just enough half-truths that I wonder what its real intent was. You get the impression from it that Germany was the first to use chemical weapons in the Great War — but it wasn't: France started, with the use of tear gas. Use of gas projectors did not violate the 1899 Hague Declaration against use of gas-filled projectiles. Use of irritants like chlorine arguably didn't violate the 1904 Hague Convention on use of poison or poisoned weapons (is an irritant a poison? does dosage matter?). The first German use of chemical weapons (tear gas, again) was on the Eastern Front, near Warsaw, not at Ypres. I don't know if the use of chlorine at Ypres was intended as an irritant or a poison — it's been too long since I studied the history. > As Germany’s population grew along with their economy, the newly formed country became ambitious. The decision was made to further their status in the world by attacking France through Belgium. That's a description of the beginning of the Great War so short that it's a lie. It's not as though the Germans woke up one morning and thought, 'hey, let's invade France!' The reason Germany attacked France was that Russia had mobilised on her eastern borders, while France was mobilising to her west (and the belief was that France was the far deadlier foe). This was in an era in which a mobilised army was believed to mean almost certain victory. And the reason that Germany invaded Belgium was that the French frontier was too heavily fortified. As it turned out, that was a good operational decision but an extraordinarily poor strategic one: while the German Army almost got to Paris, violation of Belgian neutrality led to Britain's entry into the war.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  ...arguably... Has anyone other than you argued that chlorine gas is not poisonous?
- Symmetry 9y ago
  The Germans argued at the time that their use of poison gas didn't violate the Hague Convention because they released it from dispensers on the ground rather than from gas-filled projectiles. But that was seen as a technicality by the Allies and the whole convention quickly went out the window.
turc1656 9y ago
"Great and good are seldom the same man."
PeterMikhailov 9y ago
Did Erling Johnson's work build on this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrophosphate_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrophosphate_process
sampo 9y ago
> The amount of crops one can grow is directly tied to how much nitrogen can be provided. This is only half true. You also needed to breed new crop varieties that were able to put all that abundance of nitrogen to good use. Older crops varieties, adapted to grow well in the less nitrogen-rich soils, would not simply double their output even when given double nitrogen. So there is another man, plant breeder Norman Borlaug, who is equally responsible for feeding most of our 8 billion people today. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-macaray/the-man-who-saved-a-billi_b_4099523.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-macaray/the-man-who-sav...

224 points by mikecarlton 9y ago

What an insane and fascinating read. Two things occured to me: I don’t really understand how and why war happens. Like, it starts out as two parties both wanting the same resource, and then somebody says “over my dead body” or something and then a million other people decide to also join in this fight? I do not get it. The other thing is : The “inherent harm of technology”. Every single advancement will 100% hurt someone. In this case it hurt a lot of people. But it’s impossible to stop progress, even if you keep a discovery secret for a while, it won’t last. Humanity will advance, and somewhat destroy itself in the process.

NamTaf 9y ago
If you ever get to go to to the south-west of Belgium and visit Ypres, there is an absolutely fantastic exhibit on the Great War in the Cloth Hall. The first part of it describes the late 1800s extreme nationalism and build-up to the war with very harrowing finality and a sense that the ball that caused the war had started rolling decades before its outbreak and was unstoppable by the turn of the century. I had a genuine sense of helplessness in the face of that as I finished that stage of the exhibit and went into the part regarding the period of the war itself. It is probably one of the most memorable (in the literal sense of the term) exhibits regarding the War that I've seen. I absolutely recommend it.
JCSato 9y ago
Highly recommend you check out The Great War series on Youtube. Even if you just watch the prologue to the war videos, very informative on how WW1 got kicked off. Short answer: nationalism and a lot of treaties and grudges from past wars.
- smackay 9y ago
  I saw a history documentary on the BBC many, many years ago where the historian was describing that the reason WWI started was because of railway timetables - basically moving all those troops and material was a logistical nightmare. Once the armies were assembled it was going to be impossibly difficult to move them all back so they got put into action instead. Most likely the historian was AJP Taylor: http://www.ae.metu.edu.tr/~evren/history/texts/taylor1.htm http://www.ae.metu.edu.tr/~evren/history/texts/taylor1.htm
  - michaelt 9y ago
    Once the armies were assembled it was going to be impossibly difficult to move them all back so they got put into action instead. I read a more subtle theory in the book "Arms and Influence" by Thomas C. Schelling [1]. In short, at the start of WW1, the Russians had two plans available: A plan to mobilise against the Austro-Hungarians only, and a plan to mobilise against them and the Germans at the same time. But if they went for the Austria-Hungary-only plan, they'd be extra-vulnerable to German attack. After all, the troops and trains are all in the wrong place! So although they were _mostly_ worried about Austria-Hungary, they were moderately worried about Germany, so they went with the mobilise-against-both plan. And as soon as Russia started massing troops at the German border, what could Germany do except respond in kind? Hence there was an escalation to war despite the fact neither side would benefit from it. In other words: The logistics played a part, but it wasn't _just_ using the troops because they're here now - the logistics forced the Russians to choose between two bad options, forcing them into a choice that would inevitably trigger the escalation to war. [1] https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=TX_yAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT161&lpg=PT161&dq=%22Arms+and+Influence%22+mobilise+russia&source=bl&ots=0FdXJSt2ur&sig=y1cI8iJWw9rEQKnCgz2b_uzH61M&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiQi6TP2qLZAhWmAMAKHc1cB18Q6AEIJzAA https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=TX_yAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT161&lp...
    - notahacker 9y ago
      The accompanying theory is that Germany had long planned for the eventuality of fighting a Franco-Russian alliance, and their agreed military strategy for dealing with this potential situation was to attack France first, in the hope that they could knock France out the war before Russia was fully mobilised. The need for speed in executing this plan necessitated an attack via neutral Belgium to avoid France's border forts and easily defensible territory (which was what brought Belgian ally Britain into the war)
js8 9y ago
"I don’t really understand how and why war happens." I think we don't really know. We know that greed plays a role, but it is not always the case of someone stronger attacking someone weaker. In Steven Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature, this is shortly discussed. IIRC he says that no reason put forward as an explanation for war can be conclusively proven from the available data (he mentions some war databases containing over 20k conflicts of more than 100 people each). So, I think, unfortunately, conflict is like rain. You know that condensation is the cause, yet you can't really predict when and with what intensity it will happen. But you know it will.
- milankovic 9y ago
  I can't agree more. This is an excellent observation. Also, that last sentence. Bravo. I think this is the best allegory for conflict (or war) that I have ever seen.
- arca_vorago 9y ago
  Some of us know but would be shunned if we told you. As a combat vet I have spent years since I got out trying to understand the big picture... and all I can tell you is the truth is nastier, and stranger, than fiction. I started out with just Iraq, but by the end of it had learned the GWOT was only the latest iteration of a long game that has been played over centuries.
  - moh_maya 9y ago
    What is your conclusion? Can you share? (At the risk of being shunned..,?)
  - icebraining 9y ago
    So are you posting this to taunt or to grandstand?
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    You're using an anonymous account, and I for one promise to upvote whatever "nastier, stranger" truth you post. Lay it on us, man!
okket 9y ago
Not only humanity itself. Feeding the world and letting humans grow from ~1 billion to ~8 billion certainly endangered/made many species go extinct. There is no such thing as a free meal, really.
- carlmr 9y ago
  This also reminded me of the first such revolution, the agricultural revolution. In A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harrari he says that it wasn't humans that domesticated wheat, but wheat that domesticated humans. The reasoning being that since we started to use wheat we've grown to too large numbers to go back to the previous lifestyle. We've been essentially trapped to continue using wheat, which was not even as good for our health. A similar argument could be made about the Haber-Bosch process. There's no way back from too much growth. And there are serious side effects.
nabla9 9y ago
Is this "I don't get it" just rhetorical question or are you really not getting it and want to understand it? Rudyard Kipling's writings (before and during WWII) are probably the best source if you want to learn the sentiment that leads to the war. >million other people decide to also join in this fight Most people don't get to decide. Most of them are conscripted.
- verylittlemeat 9y ago
  The United States doesn't conscript soldiers and yet can find hundreds of thousands of infantry soldiers to wage war. I don't think it's controversial to say that there's way more going on behind the effort to staff an army than threat of punishment from the government. Historically there are many examples of citizens eager to line up and fight for their country (whether for pragmatic or idealistic reasons). This isn't just patriotic rhetoric, it's a very powerful social force once set in motion. If our species has any enduring trait then violent conflict through war must be pretty close to the top of the list.
  - loorinm 9y ago
    Yeah this is kind of my point. I guess I probably don’t get it because I didn’t grow up in a military family. I guess people will do whatever they have to do for money. Because they are poor. I’m pretty poor too but I feel like I have other options than to put my life in danger.
- dsego 9y ago
  I think it's a generational thing. Young people born in time of peace romanticizing great battles, national pride etc. Peace is boring and hard, there are economical struggles, politics, many problems without someone to blame. In war time everything is much clearer, esp. for young boys, they just have to kill the bad guys (the other side) and receive accolades. Of course, the stage is usually already set up by propaganda, schools, one-sided history teaching and so on.
  - Quarrelsome 9y ago
anvandare 9y ago
War is the essence of life. Limited resources means any growing system inevitably hits this (carrying) limit. Sooner or later, there are no more unclaimed resources available and you have to start competing with others for access to the resources. Mutation and evolution follows. The only alternative is to open up more resources (like the Haber–Bosch process did) but that's just postponing the inevitable. The amount of (useful) matter and energy in the universe is both finite and decreasing.
- tyfon 9y ago
  Hopefully, we will attain enough collective intelligence eventually that we will be able stop population growth and stop having irrational hatred for other humans. I am however pessimistic.
- shaki-dora 9y ago
  Population growth has seized in industrialized countries, and is plateauing in others. Humanity’s foremost achievement is overcoming its biological roots, and any view of the world based on supposedly unchangeable evolutionary mechanisms is deeply flawed.
  - anvandare 9y ago
    The population might plateau, but our resource consumption is still rising. I'd be very surprised if we manage to avert calamity, though I'm quite certain we'll survive it.
  - gnode 9y ago
    > Humanity’s foremost achievement is overcoming its biological roots I think we're very far from that. I would say our biological roots are responsible for our individualism, which often doesn't manifest as boundless reproduction, but rather as greed.
rocqua 9y ago
I think generally, long wars are a mistake. My hypothesis. Party A wants Thing from party B. Moreover, party A things they could take it by force. Even if party B things they couldn't defend Thing, they can't just give it, because that sets a wrong precedent. Party B relies on being able to exact a very high toll should party A try to get thing. Rationally, you don't declare a war you don't expect to win. So, in the above scenario, when part A declares war, they expect that party B cannot exact a high enough toll for Thing. When they do, it was a mistake. The alternative are wars for 'moral' reasons, which are mostly about retribution or saving face. This is essentially how the murder of a prince lead escalated to a war that became WW1.
- Hattes 9y ago
  You may very well declare a war that you don't expect to win if you have even worse expectations for a future war. This was pretty much the situation of Germany in WW1, from my understanding.
  - arethuza 9y ago
    And the Soviets in '83 - who were terrified that the US and its allies were going to attack so they considered a first strike even though they knew this would be disastrous.
  - nickik 9y ago
    That was maybe what a couple of people thought. However it is totally wrong, Germany was not in that situation. Those are the kinds of things you say that already imply 100s of other theories and assumption and then you are like 'We have no choice'. Germany was in a fantastic geopolitical situation after Bismark but then just fucked it all up because they had all these wrong (and sometimes crazy) assumptions.
  - Tech-Noir 9y ago
    Or if you believe the superior power will not respond militarily, as in the Falklands in 1982. Unfortunately for the junta, they weren't the only unpopular right-wing government who saw warfare and jingoism as a handy distraction from internal economic and social problems.
bsder 9y ago
In the case of World War I, Otto von Bismarck put together an interlocking set of alliances to forge the German Empire. Unfortunately, Wilhelm II was not as capable (I'm being nice--Wilhelm II was an idiot), and didn't know how to manage this properly. It is, of course, possible that even Bismarck could not have continued to manage them given the strains of nationalism that he set in motion. However, Bismarck was very motivated to maintain the peace rather than motivated to engage in war and that served Germany very well for a remarkably long time. Even worse, Bismarck understood about not letting things get out of hand. He was quoted in 1898--"One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans"
- oblio 9y ago
  > "One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans" I absolutely despise these statements, that are perpetuated to the present day. I'm from near the Balkans, from Romania. They depict the Balkan region as being some sort of backwards warmongers, which is not the case (yes, the region is not very developed but it's far from the poorest regions on this planet; also, yes, I know about the Yugoslav Wars, but that's a rather extreme scenario and even people in the region were appalled at what the Serbs did, especially). Anyway, the reason I don't like it: it was foreign empires vying in the region that made the mess. Turks, Austrians, Russians, Brits, Italians, Germans, French, they're the ones that started the wars. There was no way the local conflicts would have ever become global conflicts. The locals just didn't have the desire or resources to escalate such a conflict. Instead these empires just used them as battering rams against the other empires.
  - myrandomcomment 9y ago
    You say this but just as soon as the yoke of Tito (and the follow on) was removed from the region everyone starting killing each other again. Historically it has been a very violent region filled with ethnic strife. The great powers just exploted that to help control, but it's existence is on the population.
    - 9y ago
mhneu 9y ago
> how war happens Orwell captured one way total war can happen: a powerful small group of people gains control of a propaganda apparatus, and uses control of messaging to divide a country, or turn a country against a demonized minority group or external rival. That happened with Mao, with Hitler, with Stalin, with Mussolini. Today’s challenge is ensuring that the propaganda arms created by Murdoch and Mercer and Koch don’t do that to America.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- convivialdingo 9y ago
  Who's the most demonized group of people in America today?
  - erikpukinskis 9y ago
    Foreign born Muslims probably.
nickik 9y ago
> I don’t really understand how and why war happens. The error you are making is that you are thinking in terms of groups or states. Think of these people as individuals. Quite simply, some individual people wanted war to fulfill their political/personal ambitions and think war can make them happen. They really don't care much about the people who die. Its quite as simple as that. So the army marches because from their perspective a legit government said, because it is in the interest of the country, plus they get payed. The defenders are just defending their home country because they don't want to see it destroyed. WW1 is really that simple.
- soundwave106 9y ago
  I think it is okay to think somewhat in groups, that is, when it comes to examining some of the psychology behind warfare. Ultimately, a lot of that side of human warfare has a lot to do IMHO with human's inherit tribalistic nature. The part about getting people to not care about the people who die is, I think, very important as far as understanding how warfare can happen on the scale it does. Most wars are characterized by strong propaganda denigrating the opposing side in negative stereotypical terms. In many cases, I think that the leaders who push for war actually share similar beliefs as a nationalism-driven populace -- it's more than mere exploitative. Such explains why how, say, conflict over scarce resources can turn into something like violent conflict, which often (ironically) has a negative impact on the scarce resources itself. Nationalism (and some things which are tangentially related like imperialism) was by many historical accounts one of the major forces that led to WWI. (As well as many other wars, I might add.)
  - nickik 9y ago
    > inherit tribalistic nature I don't think its as simple as inherent in tribal nature. Leaders are selected and they need to consider the opinion of the electorate (this concept applies to non-democratic states as well). In Political Science this is called electorate theory. > I think that the leaders who push for war actually share similar beliefs as a nationalism-driven populace -- it's more than mere exploitative Agree. > Nationalism (and some things which are tangentially related like imperialism) was by many historical accounts one of the major forces that led to WWI. (As well as many other wars, I might add.) Nationalism I would agree but in the end the choice was with some leaders, and many of those were not really nationalist but rather classical conservatives. Your point about resources is correct, they wanted to control those resources, not relay on markets and cooperation. After that the Nazis doubled down on those terrible zero sum ideas.
groby_b 9y ago
Well, good thing is we're all getting an object lesson right now. Watch North Korea and the U.S. interact. That is how war happens. Leaders who for various reasons taunt and provoke each other, implementing what to either populace seems a reasonable policy. (NK would like to be able to defend against the US, so they get nukes. The US would like to not be nuked, so they agitate strongly against them). Alas, these policies are in conflict, so tensions rise. At some point, a small event - a misunderstanding, a border skirmish, etc - happens. In the context of already ratcheted up tensions, it spirals out of control because everybody feels the need to react quickly, before the other side escalates. Nobody says "over my dead body". Everybody takes the next step, a step that's entirely reasonable from their perspective, but opens up "reasonable" steps for the other side. The core problem is that neither side considers the needs of the other side. Peace requires active communication to constantly de-escalate and compromise, from both sides. An interest in a common good. War is what happens when you lose that and move to self-interest.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  USA has constantly pressured DPRK over the course of decades, mostly for domestic political purposes. At many points we could have chosen less confrontation, but usually we chose more. Recently we offered Qaddafi the same deal we have continually offered the Kims, and then after he accepted it we "changed our minds" and shoved a bayonet up his ass. Even now we continue the pressure (somewhat erratically, because Trump), when doing so has no conceivable "self-interest" on a national level. Of course more war is very much in the interest of armaments manufacturers and their sockpuppets in politics and the media. If war were ever in the overall national interest, we'd occasionally win a war or even just accomplish some vague goal by fighting one. That has never happened in my lifetime or that of my parents. Of course I have to stipulate now that the Kim Dynasty are very bad no-good people whom we should all detest, otherwise trolls might pretend to misunderstand me.
  - nsnick 9y ago
    At some point you have to stand up to despots in the name of human rights.
dschuetz 9y ago
A war is always the ultimate escalation of conflict of interests. "Over my dead body" is literally the line, as you said. As for technology, the purpose of a machine or a construct is primarily a solution to problems which made people's lifes difficult. The solutions of technology make people's lifes easier, more secure, but it also bears risks and unsforseen consequences. That's not always that case, as the special case of war clearly show it. War machinery makes people's lifes worse, but it's not the fault of machinery or technologies, it the fault of people waging wars.
- dschuetz 9y ago
  This discussion on Haber today inspired me to write a short article on whether it's even debatable how to judge his doing in WW I. Especially so the "Over my dead body" and why do wars thoughts, so kudos to you @nickik!
zeveb 9y ago
> I don’t really understand how and why war happens. Like, it starts out as two parties both wanting the same resource, and then somebody says “over my dead body” or something and then a million other people decide to also join in this fight? I do not get it. Different wars start for different reasons. The Great War started because the Serbian government financed a small group of separatists in Austria-Hungary, who assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. The Austro-Hungarian government naturally objected, and presented the Serbians with an ultimatum essentially demanding the ability to investigate & prosecute anyone involved. Serbia refused, supported by its ally Russia, who mobilised & threatened to invade Austria-Hungary & Germany if either did anything to Serbia. Due to the military realities of the time, if one country mobilised and another didn't, the former country would be able to take great swathes of territory from the latter before the latter could do anything. So of course with Russia mobilised Germany had to mobilise. And of course with Germany mobilised France had to mobilise too. France, meanwhile, really wanted to take back a piece of territory that Germany had won in 1873 (and France had previously won in 1648 …), so planned to invade Germany as soon as Germany & France's ally Russia were fighting. The Russian army was large but poor, while France's was smaller but deadly. Faced with a two-front war, the German plan was to hold Russia at bay while defeating France first, then swing to the east and defeat Russia second. However, a fight across the heavily-fortified Franco-German border would have been far too slow to defeat France in a timely fashion, so the Germans planned to go around the French border fortresses by marching through Belgium, never mind that Belgium had not agreed to this plan. So, Germany invades Belgium, invades France, almost makes it to Paris, gets pushed back, the Brits join the fight, the Western Front solidifies into a four-year stalemate in which roughly 3 million men die and 8 million are wounded; Austria-Hungary invades Serbia but does remarkably poorly; Russia invades Germany & Austria-Hungary; Turkey joins the fray, hoping to reconquer some of the Balkan countries which had won their independence. Ultimately the victorious Allies assign guilt for the war to Germany, imposing reparations which set the stage for the much nastier Second World War; the monarchs of Serbia, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia & Turkey lose their thrones and/or lives; Russia falls to Bolshevik Communism (which sets the stage for the much nastier Second World War); Eastern Europe is broken into a patchwork of states with an unstable ethnic mixture (which sets the stage for the much nastier Second World War); millions die; and the Belle Époque, the highest point of western civilisation, gives way to the horror & madness of the twentieth century, the single bloodiest hundred years mankind's ever seen. As for the assassin who started it all? Too young to be executed, he wastes away & dies in prison of tuberculosis.
emp_ 9y ago
Adding to an extensive reply list, violence seems to sprout when conversation ends, usually when people will protect ideas from being challenged is a big tell.
lxmorj 9y ago
The assumption that all things discovered will be discovered elsewhere is reasonable, but still an assumption. I wonder though... how many dangerous ideas have been hidden by their progenitors, never to be rediscovered?
loorinm 9y ago
OP here. Wow thanks for all the replies and views on why war happens. I guess you could always explain any war by listing all the events that came righ before, but I don’t think that answers another question, which is this: Why is it “ok” for governments to hire huge groups of people to murder other people, when murder is not ok in other settings? This is an obvious legal and moral contradiction right?
- hutzlibu 9y ago
  "This is an obvious legal and moral contradiction right?" No it is not. Legally it is only for members of the own society. But in war this society acts as a group against another group. Legally totally different. (morally different story) But still complicated especially today with asymmetrical warfare. (france for example has no death penalty, but don't want their (IS) djihadists to come back and create legal problems (proving guilt is hard and putting them in jail creates also problems) ... so apparently it is easier for the French government to (secretly) order their special troops to make sure that not much of the french jihadists ended up as prisoners in syria or elsewhere and then demanded being brought back to french .. because killing in war is legal .. but since they have doubts on their own, it is of course not officially practiced) Oh and in theory of course, nobody is starting a war anymore, since this is somewhat outlawed. Everyone is only "defending". Which does make sense, also morally - so yeah I believe in general it is OK to have a group of people trained to kill in case bad killers invade. Having a army to defend. Simple isolationist? But what if there are friends of yours under attack somewhere else in the planet? You go and help them, morally right, I believe. But then things get complicated ... as "friends", people, cultures and states are not homogeneous things. So those friends of yours might be part of a legally justified dictatorship. So you invade that dictatorship? And teach them democracy? Well, that failed quite spectacular all the last times, but maybe that was also because of different reasons, as there were usually not so much "friends" who needed help, but rather a lot of hypocrisy to disguise plain old power politic where war is just a tool for politics in the bigger cultural struggle.

jzl 9y ago

There is an incredible book about this topic called "The Alchemy of Air"@, which I highly recommend. It's one of the best non-fiction science books I've ever read. Also available on Audible. Fritz Haber's life story is intertwined with Einstein's and the book pairs extremely well with Walter Isaacson's Einstein biography, which is a MUST read (or audiobook listen). @ - Full title: "The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler"

nvahalik 9y ago
Thomas Hager wrote that book along with “The Demon under the Microscope”. Excellent works.
Pulcinella 9y ago
I second this recommendation. It also covers Carl Bosch, who took Haber’s process and industrialized it at BASF. Haber got the process to work in a small bespoke quartz reactor, which obviously wouldn’t scale.

abainbridge 9y ago

> Fritz Haber set that future by on a different course by solving one of the greatest problems humanity ever faced: How to feed the world. He didn't solve it. He just delayed the problem for a while. Solving it requires stopping the exponential growth of the human population.

nabla9 9y ago
Human population is not growing exponentially anymore. Human population growth rate peaked 1962 at 2.1%, and it has been slowing down since. Even remaining population growth is a big problem, but using he word 'exponentially' to describe growth that is slowing down and is most likely sublinear is not accurate.
- abainbridge 9y ago
  Yes, sorry, you are right. I still think we might have a nicer planet if Fritz had invented a (humane) way to prevent the exponential population growth we had in the 20th century, instead of a way to support it.
cdoxsey 9y ago
A lot of people don't know this but birth rates have fallen dramatically: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility We will soon have the opposite problem in many countries - an aging population with no base of support.

soneca 9y ago

"Billions of people would not exist without him. And yet without him, World War I would have ended years earlier" The article is very interesting, but there is this Hollywood simplistic approach where one man is responsible for all things. The text even mention the Allies developing a poison gas, why not other German chemic? No one other person would be able to discover how to produce amonia? I don't subscribe to this way of looking into historical figures. Nevertheless, a great text.

nabla9 9y ago
It seems that he was lobbying hard for the use of the gas.
- notahacker 9y ago
  Yep. Prevailing military opinion against using poison gases could have changed over the course of the war, of course, but he brought both the technical knowhow and the outspoken advocacy. The Allies' first alleged use of poison gas turned out to be an unfounded rumour which Haber himself was responsible for disproving. Didn't take the Allies long to muster a response though, and they had their own Nobel Laureate Victor Grignard to build chemical weapons for them.
nscalf 9y ago
To put some of this into context, there were a lot of people saying that the world was going to run out of food soon and we couldn't sustain our growing population. It'd be as if someone today invented a solution to global warming, it was a problem everyone knew about and worried about to some extend.
mannykannot 9y ago
There is no doubt that if he had not solved the nitrogen-fixing problem, someone else would have, and it is certainly possible that someone else would have pushed the use of poison gas into practice. It is also generally simplistic to claim that any one thing greatly prolonged the war. 'Great men' and 'pivotal event' historiography is a simplistic way of looking at the past, but nevertheless, it is a simple historical fact that he was the person who did these two things, and the case for nitrogen-fixing extending the war is better than most other 'but for...' stories.

baybal2 9y ago

Haber was a true giant. Nobody out people there would've lived without him inventing a process that lead to first generation chemical fertilizers. An invention I rank second to invention of fire in history of our species. (third being the metallurgy) Yet, the man is unknown to non-chemist, and some anthropologists

xefer 9y ago

The great Vaclav Smil wrote about the Haber process and its relationship to world population in a Scientific American article in 1997: http://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/Smil_SciAm_N2cycle.pdf http://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/Smil_SciAm_N2cycle.... [PDF] It sort of blew my mind when I read it back then

nscalf 9y ago

If you're interested in this, RadioLab did a great episode on good and evil and really took note of Fritz Haber. It's called The Bad Show. Fritz Haber was a really conflicting character, he seemed extremely patriotic and made a lot of personal sacrifices for his country. Every time I see someone who is described like that, I have to wonder how much of the disdain we have for him is because that wasn't our country? If we had a brilliant man who invented a solution to the worldwide fear of an impending food shortage, but they also made a disturbing wartime weapon, would we feel the same way?

aalleavitch 9y ago
Isn't that basically the case for all the famous men on the Manhattan project?
- wbl 9y ago
  They made sacrifices for someone else's country. A lot of them were not US citizens.
  - mieseratte 9y ago
    Sure, a whole lot of 'em might have been of foreign origin but that doesn't preclude one from being or becoming an American.
mieseratte 9y ago
> Every time I see someone who is described like that, I have to wonder how much of the disdain we have for him is because that wasn't our country? If we had a brilliant man who invented a solution to the worldwide fear of an impending food shortage, but they also made a disturbing wartime weapon, would we feel the same way? He might be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch!

23443463455 9y ago

It's interesting what a white wash of the monster this piece is. Get the bad out of the way so the "good" can clear the conscience. When do we start applying this technique to the Nazis?

jumbopapa 9y ago

Oh yeah, I heard about this guy on the Joe Rogan Experience!

BLanen 9y ago
Yea... Quite a lot... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhNWB4eqQbI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhNWB4eqQbI

mmirate 9y ago

Quite obviously the billions of people outweigh the millions of soldiers.

stevespang 9y ago

Thanks for posting this, I was not aware of this CRIME.

dschuetz 9y ago

I don't think that his involvements in WW I are justified by his achievements in chemistry in favor of world population problems. Someone else would have found a way to bind nitrogen without him and so feed billions of people in the end. Much later perhaps, but eventually still. Yet, most of today's populus have barely enough to eat. So, ultimataly the problem remains unsolved, or it shifted even. Haber was not a solution. He was as tragic and as fanatic as everybody else in Europe at that time. Nazi Germany also have invented A LOT of world changing things. They solved a lot of problems. Yet, they managed to do such unspeakable things that all the good stuff instantly fades. In my humble opinion, it's not difficult to judge a person who commits unspeakable crimes by his good or bad deeds. Good deeds are optional, always. Bad deeds are never an option, regardless of eventual outcomes or consequences.

0ld 9y ago
> such unspeakable things that all the good stuff instantly fades Well, in 50-100 years noone would really care about atrocities of ww2, just like almost noone cares about ww1 now, and literary noone about the atrocities of the wars before ww1. But "the world-changing things" will stay, and the people who created these things will be remembered
- dschuetz 9y ago
  I don't agree. The Mongol Empire as an example is still remembered to this day. Nobody cares what exactly they did, but it's common sense that it was pretty bad. British colonial era? Same thing, but half the world still remembers what atrocities they have commited, and it was longer ago as WW I. It's the bad things generations of people remember, the good things not so much. You know, hate sows war, war sows hate. The vicious circle as old as time.
  - hh3k0 9y ago
    > The Mongol Empire as an example is still remembered to this day. Nobody cares what exactly they did, but it's common sense that it was pretty bad. Is it really? I think most people only remember them as successful conquerors. > British colonial era? Same thing, but half the world still remembers what atrocities they have commited, and it was longer ago as WW I. Depends! The British Empire lasted until the 1960s -- arguably 1997. That's much fresher than WW1 or WW2. Besides, who remembers the British concentration camps?

perfmode 9y ago

> Billions of people would not exist without him As if this is a gift. A big assumption to make. More and more, I am taking to the anti-natalist viewpoint.

workthrowaway27 9y ago
That's a poor approach to life. I've tried it.
- perfmode 9y ago
  Say more

zeveb 9y ago

Wow, the article is full of just enough half-truths that I wonder what its real intent was. You get the impression from it that Germany was the first to use chemical weapons in the Great War — but it wasn't: France started, with the use of tear gas. Use of gas projectors did not violate the 1899 Hague Declaration against use of gas-filled projectiles. Use of irritants like chlorine arguably didn't violate the 1904 Hague Convention on use of poison or poisoned weapons (is an irritant a poison? does dosage matter?). The first German use of chemical weapons (tear gas, again) was on the Eastern Front, near Warsaw, not at Ypres. I don't know if the use of chlorine at Ypres was intended as an irritant or a poison — it's been too long since I studied the history. > As Germany’s population grew along with their economy, the newly formed country became ambitious. The decision was made to further their status in the world by attacking France through Belgium. That's a description of the beginning of the Great War so short that it's a lie. It's not as though the Germans woke up one morning and thought, 'hey, let's invade France!' The reason Germany attacked France was that Russia had mobilised on her eastern borders, while France was mobilising to her west (and the belief was that France was the far deadlier foe). This was in an era in which a mobilised army was believed to mean almost certain victory. And the reason that Germany invaded Belgium was that the French frontier was too heavily fortified. As it turned out, that was a good operational decision but an extraordinarily poor strategic one: while the German Army almost got to Paris, violation of Belgian neutrality led to Britain's entry into the war.

jessaustin 9y ago
...arguably... Has anyone other than you argued that chlorine gas is not poisonous?
Symmetry 9y ago
The Germans argued at the time that their use of poison gas didn't violate the Hague Convention because they released it from dispensers on the ground rather than from gas-filled projectiles. But that was seen as a technicality by the Allies and the whole convention quickly went out the window.

turc1656 9y ago

"Great and good are seldom the same man."

PeterMikhailov 9y ago

Did Erling Johnson's work build on this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrophosphate_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrophosphate_process

sampo 9y ago

> The amount of crops one can grow is directly tied to how much nitrogen can be provided. This is only half true. You also needed to breed new crop varieties that were able to put all that abundance of nitrogen to good use. Older crops varieties, adapted to grow well in the less nitrogen-rich soils, would not simply double their output even when given double nitrogen. So there is another man, plant breeder Norman Borlaug, who is equally responsible for feeding most of our 8 billion people today. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-macaray/the-man-who-saved-a-billi_b_4099523.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-macaray/the-man-who-sav...